A Data Management Plan (DMP) is a formal written document that describes the data you expect to acquire or generate during the course of a research project, how you will manage, describe, analyse, and store those data, and what mechanisms you will use at the end of your project to share and preserve your data (Stanford University Libraries, n.d.)
There are very various template tools available to assist the researcher in completing a Data management Plan (DMP). The following tools are the most well-known:
Funding agencies have their own DMP templates, each with their own requirements. These can be found on the tools mentioned above.
The UP Policy on Research Data Management stipulates that UP Researchers should complete a data management plan when they embark on their research. For those researchers that are conducting research without funder applications, there is a generic UP Data Management Plan template available.
| Agency | Effective Date | DMP Required | Sharing platform |
| USGS | Yes | USGS Data Catalogs | |
| NIH | Yes | Existing publicly accessible repositories | |
| NASA | 1 January 2015 | Yes | To be determined |
| NSF | January 2016 | Yes since 2011 | |
| NEH Office of Digital Humanities | 2014 | Yes | NEH does not endorse the use of any specific repository |
| Wellcome Trust | Yes | Researchers should deposit data in recognised data repositories where these exist for particular data types. For recommended repositories click here! |